Latest Hillary Emails Raise Questions About Corruption, China

Judicial Watch released another set of Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails today; these are slowly being produced in response to one or more court orders. You can download some of them here. Two email threads are particularly interesting, both relating to China. This is the first thread, dated September 2010. Click to enlarge:

Doug Band was a key adviser to Bill Clinton who represented the Clinton Foundation. Huma Abedin asked Band how Bill Clinton’s meeting with “Wen,” i.e., Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, went. Huma explained that Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State, wanted “points” from Wen’s meeting with her husband so she could use them in her own meeting with Wen, which apparently was taking place at that very moment.

Band forwarded Huma’s request to Amitabh Desai, another Clinton Foundation employee, who described the meeting to Abedin. Some highlights:

Wjc mentioned South China Sea, wen said it’s clear China controls it and don’t need any more discussions or agreements and hopes wjc can help make this clear.

China’s neighbors do not agree that China has a right to the entire South China Sea, and this has become a contentious issue on the world state. Did Bill Clinton, who in 2010 held no official position, “help make…clear” China’s hegemony over the South China Sea?

The reference is evidently to U.S. legislation aimed at currency manipulation by China. Did Bill Clinton–again, a private citizen as of 2010–help his Chinese friends “avoid currency legislation”? Such legislation has been proposed, but, to my knowledge, not enacted.

Wjc said people seeking good relations with china also are looking internally at how US can help itself

Wjc suggested more cooperation on energy especially transport, to reduce US imports of oil (thereby reduce US trade deficit)

Wjc suggested china use US dollars not only to buy treasuries but also to invest in US to help put Americans to work–said this would make a huge difference

Bill Clinton is acting here as an advisor to the Chinese government. In particular, he is offering suggestions as to positions China might take when dealing with the President of the United States:

Wen said he would raise both ideas with bho

This is all rather stunning. Bill Clinton was an advisor to the Chinese government–a paid advisor, too; during his post-presidency, Clinton and the Clinton Foundation reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions, from the Chinese government and other Chinese entities. Bill gave advice to the Chinese Premier, and his aides forwarded the substance of his conversation with Wen to his wife, the Secretary of State, for her use in her own meeting with Wen. And Wen said that he would use Bill Clinton’s ideas in negotiating with Barack Obama. The incest is bad enough, but the money flowing from China to Bill and Hillary Clinton make these arrangements corrupt by any definition.

The second set of emails, reproduced in their entirety below, relate to an invitation that the Chinese government extended to Bill Clinton to attend an event in Beijing in December 2011 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of China’s joining the World Trade Organization. The first email, dated September 30, 2011, comes from Du Shuang of the Commercial Office of the Chinese Embassy, and is addressed to Amitabh Desai, an employee of the Clinton Foundation who also wrote the email above.

It says, in part:

Twelve years ago, under the capable leadership of H.E. President Clinton [I assume H.E. stands for “His Excellency”] and Chinese leaders, the U.S. and China successfully signed the Bilateral Agreement on China’s WTO Accession. That Agreement greatly accelerated China’s negotiation process, symbolizing a critical step for China to enter into the WTO. …

As an eyewitness and advocate of China’s entry into the WTO, H.E. President Clinton is of prime importance and special significance to the Forum. As VIP guest of the Forum, President Clinton will meet and take photographs with China’s top leaders attending this occasion. He will also be invited to address the audience at the Forum for around five minutes.

Bill Clinton did indeed play a key role in accelerating China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization and thereby facilitated the enormous role that China now plays in international trade. Bill Clinton was no doubt proud of having advanced China’s interests (and, many would say, the interests of the U.S. and other nations) in 2001. But by late 2011, when these emails were written, China’s trade role was not viewed so positively in the U.S.

Desai responded almost immediately, wanting to know whether China’s President Hu would be present at the December event. A week later Du Shuang replied that Hu would be there. He added:

We really hope President Clinton can attend the event as we attach great importance to his support of China’s accession to WTO.

Oddly, Desai waited a month before doing anything further. Finally, on November 8, he wrote to Hillary Clinton’s committee of insiders at the State Department, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Michael Fuchs and Jake Sullivan:

The Chinese government is inviting WJC to an event in Beijing on December 10-12, celebrating China’s accession to the WTO ten years ago. … Would USG [the United States Government] have any particularly positive or negative feelings about this?

Various State Department employees then went back and forth on the invitation. Their emails are unclassified, but every word is redacted. The contents of the emails were withheld by State under the kitchen sink b5 exemption, even though it is hard to imagine any basis on which they were privileged. One can easily speculate that the topic under discussion was the politics of free trade as of late 2011. The upshot was that Bill Clinton apparently did not attend the event in Beijing.

If I were working for the Trump campaign, I would find these email threads of great interest.